Vroom with a View - 1950 Oldsmobile 88

Childhood memories made the 1950 Oldsmobile 88 Deluxe a car of a lifetime

from Hemmings Classic Car

It's often been said that automobiles can offer their occupants a different perspective on the world, one that is broadened through speed and distance. For a budding car enthusiast, one car's special features opened up a whole new world, fostering an appreciation that would turn into both his profession and his lifelong passion.
"I was born in July 1948, and I was a car kid before I was a car guy," explains Hobart Dickey of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. Hobe, as he is called, is an automotive technician by trade, and traces the roots of his interest in automobiles back to a dark gray late-production 1950 Oldsmobile 88 Deluxe that his mother's parents bought in 1951. It was this car that he'd chase for nearly 40 years, and it led to obtaining the green 1950 88 Deluxe featured on these pages.
"As a kid, I was fascinated by hood ornaments, and the most amazing things about this 1950 Olds 88 were the rocket hood ornament and the one-piece windshield. This was the first car I rode in that had a one-piece windshield and no clutch pedal, and this was coming from a three- or four-year-old; that's how observant I was. My father had a 1950 Chevy coupe, and we didn't have car seats back then, let alone seatbelts, so when I would go anywhere with my mom and dad, I could stand up on the front seat between the two of them. But there was this bar down the middle of the windshield that interfered with my view of the hood ornament. So this Oldsmobile with the one-piece windshield was just the hottest thing I'd ever been in," Hobe recalled.
"As a three- or four-year-old, I could barely see over the top of the dash, but to look down the center of that hood into the back of that rocket hood ornament was the ultimate, as far as I was concerned."
Hobe laughed when he told us, "In the spring of 1958, the engine started to fail, burning oil badly; I remember watching my grandmother drive away from our house with smoke pluming from the tailpipe. I remember being in it at a stop sign, and the car would shake--the engine was misfiring on at least one cylinder, and I'd speculate that it had a cracked piston, which would account for the oil consumption. They got an estimate for $300 to overhaul the engine. My grandparents came over for dinner on a Sunday afternoon in June of 1958; they told us that they'd decided not to fix the Oldsmobile, and were buying a new 1958 Chevrolet. I never said a word, but when they left, I got down under the kitchen table and just bawled, because I didn't want them to sell that car.
"If I had to decide where my love affair with the automobile began, it started with that car. I made that commitment to myself then--someday, I was going to have a 1950 Olds 88 just like the one my grandmother had."
The four-door Delray sedan that replaced the 88 Deluxe--a car that, in protest over the Olds' ignominious fate, Hobe told himself he'd never ride in--was ironically the car he inherited when he went off to college. While he was in college, he found a two-door 1950 88 in a nearby junkyard, but its wheel covers and Wonderbar radio were all he could take home.
It wasn't until a 1988 visit to a salvage yard in Cheyenne, Wyoming, that he would encounter another iteration of his dream car, a four-door: "It was tightly wedged between two other vehicles, but I was able to get the driver's door open and get in. I was looking at the dash, and I couldn't contain myself--I had to lean over to where I was right in the center of the seat and look straight to the back of that hood ornament."
Hobe didn't have a way to bring that car back to his home in Salisbury, Maryland, but the following year he borrowed a truck and trailer from his friend Ronnie Bishop; during a visit home to Iowa for the holidays, he made the 4,000-mile round trip to buy that sedan. "I actually had it running out there on the trailer before I brought it home," he recalls. "I put the Hydra-Matic in drive and it wanted to go forward; I put it in reverse and it wanted to back up. I got the car home and got it to where it was driveable. It didn't need much--the brake cylinders needed to be overhauled, and I put dual exhausts and Glaspac mufflers on it because those old engines sound so good.
"I drove that car for a couple of years, but it had a burnt valve and was running rough, so in 1992, I decided to give it a valve job. I took the cylinder heads off, and figured that since I was into it that deep, I'd take the pistons out and install new rings... and that was as far as that project got."
Working two jobs stalled the project, and a move to Iowa in 1996 really pushed the Olds 88 into the background, but a 2003 visit with old friend Ronnie rekindled the flame. "He opened Auto Round-Up magazine and pointed to a picture, saying 'You need to call this guy about this car.' He turned the magazine around, and the ad read: 'For Sale, 1950 Oldsmobile 88, 47,000 original miles, needs paint and AT needs work. $3,200 or best offer.' I thought that was pretty reasonable for the car and the mileage."
Hobe arranged to see the green Deluxe sedan in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, on his way home. "The seller, Mr. Duffy, wasn't there when I got to his house, but the car was in his backyard, up against a shed. It was dark, but I walked around the car and looked it over. I couldn't believe the condition it was in: It was all there. The paint was faded, and there was a little bit of surface rust on the places where the paint was thin, but it was complete--the wheel covers were there, the fender skirts were on it, the chrome was decent. It had the extra-cost backup lamps and a radio, too.
"I opened up the driver's door, got in and looked around with a flashlight. For the heck of it, I put the gearshift in neutral and pushed the starter button, and the engine cranked, so it had a good battery and the engine wasn't stuck. I called the seller and told him I'd take the car, and didn't even argue on the price."
Ronnie came through again by picking up the car and storing it in Maryland until Hobe could retrieve it the following summer.
"While it was out there, I fixed the brakes, rebuilding the wheel cylinders so I could stop it while loading and unloading it from the trailer. We put a temporary five-gallon gas can in the trunk with a hose down the fuel line because the fuel tank was really nasty; somebody had resealed the tank at one point, and all that stuff was lying in the bottom of the tank. To get that car running, all I had to do was install a fuel pump, tune it up and rebuild the carburetor. I drove it down the street in front of his shop," Hobe recalls.
"The transmission shifted, but very early--it was in fourth gear by the time I got up to 20 MPH. That was a simple mechanical adjustment--there's a throttle valve rod that goes from the carburetor linkage down to the transmission, and all you need to do is shorten that rod to raise the shift points. I got it to where it was shifting much better, and when I checked the fluid level, it was three quarts low. I topped it off, and the transmission worked perfectly."
A later check of the transmission's band adjustment showed that everything was spot on. "Either somebody took good care of this car and didn't abuse it, or the transmission was possibly rebuilt... when I took the pan off to change the fluid, there was a thin layer of what I'd call 'mud' at the bottom, where the fluid had possibly never been changed."
Once his second Olds 88 sedan was home, Hobe spent about 12 hours with a buffer to bring the luster back to the medium green metallic paint. "It was a lot of work, but it was worth the effort. I'm sure this car spent a lot of time sitting outside, because the headliner has a substantial amount of water staining where it's leaked around the windshield and back glass. There's no rust-out anywhere in this car I've been able to find, and I firmly believe that nothing has ever been done to this car aside from required maintenance. I even have the Pennsylvania title that shows it was first licensed on December 18, 1950.
"I put dual exhausts and Glaspac mufflers on this one too," Hope proudly told us. "It's a real thrill to drive. I had radial tires on it when I first got it, but I didn't like the way it handled. I had radials on the other Olds, and experienced the same handling problem: The back end of the car--which has coil springs front and rear--felt loose, like it wanted to sway when you went over dips or bumps. I bought five original-style 7.60 x 15 BFGoodrich whitewall bias-ply tires from Coker Tire and swapped in the front 'knee action' shocks from a 1952 88 Super, and it made all the difference in the world, a 100 percent improvement."
Hobe has replaced two rocker arms and pushrods in the green sedan's 303-cu.in. V-8 to cure the ticking sounds caused by an oiling problem, and he continues to put about 1,000 miles on it each year, with the total now hovering around 51,000.
"People have seen this car and have asked, 'When are you going to restore it?' I say, 'I'm not going to restore it--I've already got one of these cars torn apart in my garage, and I don't need two of them!' I'm just going to leave it alone, keep it clean, drive it and enjoy it."

This article originally appeared in the August, 2009 issue of Hemmings Classic Car.